by Mike Markel
I glanced over at Ryan, who was smiling a little as he wrote in his notebook. He apparently understood what the title of the course meant.
I put out my hand and shook my head to signal my confusion. “Can you help me with that, Professor?”
He nodded, then closed his heavy eyelids for a moment. “The reference is to President Eisenhower’s valedictory warning about the military-industrial complex.” He looked at Ryan, who was nodding, too.
“How’s that relate to porn?”
“I think the point is that pornography has become a massive industry built on the fragmentation of modern society.”
“What’s that mean?”
“As familial and other social ties have broken down—due to the decline of the traditional family unit, economic pressures, and the geographical dispersal of the population—and the Internet has become the nexus of our social interaction, pornography has filled the vacuum.”
I looked over at Ryan. He nodded slightly to tell me he would explain it to me later.
“We’re gonna need a list of the students.”
He held up a finger, then stood and walked to the door. “Linda, would you print me two copies of the roster for Virginia’s porn class?” He walked back to his chair and sat down.
“Do you know anything about a young woman living in her house?”
He shook his head. “No idea. I’ve never been to her house.”
“She has a son. College age,” I said.
He shrugged his shoulders but didn’t say anything. Linda came back in and started to hand him the copies of the class roster. He pointed to me, and she handed me the papers.
“Here’s what we’d like you to do. Contact all the students from the class. Get them in here at eleven o’clock this morning. Not just an email blast or texts; phone them individually. Put them in your conference room or a classroom, okay?”
He nodded. “Do you want me there?”
“Sure, you come, too.”
I stood. “Okay, Professor Sorenson, sorry about all this. We’ll see you a little later.”
I thanked Linda as we left the department office. Ryan and I made it outside the Social Science Building. The idiot smokers had left, but it still smelled like cigarettes. I looked around. A few feet from the door, off to the side, sat a cheap plastic planter with an inch of brown water and a hundred butts in it. It stank.
“Give me a second here, would you?” Ryan sat on a low brick wall that abutted the concrete path to the building. He opened his briefcase and pulled out his tablet.
“Sure.” We didn’t have anything scheduled before the eleven o’clock back here with the kids from the porn class.
“What I thought.” Ryan was nodding his head. “Virginia Rinaldi had much bigger enrollments than anyone else in the department.”
I shrugged. “You put masturbation in the title of the course, yeah, that’ll happen.”
“Whereas the others—including Daryl Sorenson—are pulling only half as many.”
“Where’re you going?”
“I’m just saying everybody’s aware of enrollments. The university wants high enrollments. Departments like sociology, they’re always struggling to show they’re pulling their weight. This new researcher comes on board. She not only publishes and gets grants, she out-teaches him. That’s got to sting.”
“Yeah, I got that. He didn’t like her. She didn’t like him.” I pulled my sunglasses out of my bag and put them on. “What am I missing?”
“I’m just saying, we shouldn’t rule him out just yet.”
“Go ahead.”
“First, he’s big enough to hurt her.”
“So’re most of the men in Rawlings.”
“You catch him say he’s never been to her house?” Ryan said.
“Yeah. So what?”
“You didn’t ask a question about her house. You asked if he knew about the young woman living there. That’s the way guilty people act: They say too much.”
“Or he was just telling us he wasn’t social friends with Virginia. Maybe it was a little dig at her for not inviting him over to her place—even though she’s got students coming over all the time.” I paused. “Anything else?”
“He resented the direction she was pulling the department.”
I shook my head. “You get up near retirement age, you resent most of the changes happening to your world. Doesn’t mean you’re gonna kill anybody about it.”
“She called him a pathetic loser—publicly, in that meeting.”
“Yeah, she sounds like a bitch. But speaking on behalf of all pathetic losers, let me tell you a secret: We know what we are. They’ve got different ranks for the professors, just like we do for cops and detectives. She’s some kind of hot-shit professor. That’s the way she’s gonna think: She’s a winner and everyone else is a loser. For all we know, Sorenson and the rest of the deadwood thought she was an asshole for saying it in public.”
“You saw him twitching.”
“Yeah, it made him mad. Maybe he twitches so he doesn’t have to kill her. I used to get drunk and pass out. Twitching would’ve been smarter.”
Ryan nodded, like I’d made a good point. He looked down at his tablet. “Let me see how many students are in the porn class.”
I pulled the roster out of my bag. “Seventeen.”
“Long as we’re here, want to see what we can learn about them?”
I looked at my watch: 9:30. “Yeah, we got some time.”
“Want me to call Mary Dawson?”
“The dean of students?”
He nodded, then swiped a little bit on his tablet screen. He pulled out his cell and punched in a number, then handed me his phone.
I got through to her and asked if we could meet for a couple minutes about a case we were working on. I ended the call and handed Ryan his phone. “She said she’d be happy to meet with us.” I smiled. “Said she looks forward to it.”
“She hasn’t heard about Virginia Rinaldi.”
“Doesn’t sound like it.”
“So why are we asking about the students?” Ryan said.
I thought for a moment. “We’re investigating the cause of death. Want to talk to the students, see if Virginia told any of them she was sick. We need their contact information.”
“I already know how to get their contact information.”
I looked at him. “Or we open with how the professor was a total bitch. Then we’ll show her the roster and ask her which student Virginia pissed off so bad he tossed her down the stairs.”
Ryan smiled. “Now, that’s a plan.”
Chapter 5
Mary Dawson, the dean of students at Central Montana State University, emerged from her office to greet us. She was an attractive woman gracefully approaching fifty. She wore dean-appropriate clothing—wool slacks and blazer, a silk blouse, a single strand of pearls—and used restraint in cutting and coloring her hair. Only her multicolored eyeglass frames hinted at her youthful personality.
I’m sure she had to do all sorts of dreary and depressing administrative chores, but most people in Rawlings saw her on TV as the students’ proud mother hen. At graduations and award ceremonies, she was always right up front, clapping, smiling, and making whooping noises. She hugged the students and kissed them on the cheek. The girls drank in the attention. Even the boys, intent on acting too cool for her, couldn’t help smiling when she made a fuss over them. They knew she meant it.
And when a student screwed up or got hurt—which, unfortunately, we’d seen a few times—she took it personally, like it was one of her own kids. We’d seen her tear into a kid who let her down; and we’d seen her crying, out of control, at a student’s funeral service.
Today she put on a tentative smile. She didn’t have anything against me and Ryan, but she knew that detectives don’t usually stop by to chat.
“Thanks for taking the time, Dean Dawson. You remember my partner, Detective Ryan Miner?”
“Yes, of course. Detective
.” She shook Ryan’s hand, then turned back to me. “Call me Mary.”
She led us back into her office and gestured for us to sit. She took one of the chairs across from ours. “I’m afraid to ask.” She ran her fingers through her auburn hair.
“Unfortunately, it’s not good news. Virginia Rinaldi—the sociology professor?—has died.”
“Oh, my God. What happened?” Her hand came up to her mouth.
“We think it was an accident at her home. She fell down the stairs.”
“This is just terrible.” She shook her head. “What a dynamic personality. Her students loved her.”
“You heard that?”
“That’s all I heard. Dr. Rinaldi this, Dr. Rinaldi that. She helped so many of the students—”
“You mean, like getting jobs, getting into graduate school?”
“Well, yes, there was that. But even the ones who weren’t her majors. She’d hook them up with community groups—internships, volunteer work. She had them reaching out to the refugee communities, the migrant workers, the women’s shelter, the nursing homes. Any population that needed help. She made sociology real to them. Enrollment went up in the courses. The number of majors went up. It was remarkable.” She shook her head. “I’m speechless, just speechless. What a devastating loss.” She took off her glasses, which hung on a gold chain, and dabbed at her eyes with her thumb and forefinger, smudging her eyeliner a little. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right, Mary.” I paused a second. “But some of the students weren’t fans, right?”
She frowned and waved her hand. “That’s inevitable.” She leaned toward me. “This has always been a very conservative environment. When a professor gets students fired up about progressive causes—income inequality, LGBT issues, sex trafficking—there’ll be some …”
She didn’t want to say the word. I was fine with it. “Idiots?”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Some students—community members, too—who see her as a threat to their own interests and their own values.” She shook her head, as if she were trying to awaken from a nightmare. “How can I help?”
“The incident happened last night—we think around ten pm. She held a class at her house until nine. We’re going to interview the students in a little while, back in the sociology department. You know, see if she said anything to them about being sick. We were hoping you could print us the transcripts of the students. And let us know if there were any … any disciplinary problems we ought to know about.”
The concerned look that came over Mary Dawson’s face told me what had just happened. “What are you saying?”
“Like I said, we were hoping you could get us the records—”
“No, I mean about how Virginia died.”
“Mary, this is just routine. We have to investigate to determine the cause of death. One of the things is we need to rule out foul play. It’s just protocol.”
She tilted her head quizzically. “But if you’re asking about disciplinary problems, you’re obviously thinking—”
“Mary, don’t get ahead of yourself. The autopsy hasn’t been conducted yet. We could find out she had some kind of heart condition. Maybe she had a heart attack or something and fell down the stairs. Could be just a terrible accident.” I tried for a smile, made it about halfway.
Mary Dawson stood, put her glasses on, and came over to me. I pulled the roster out of my leather bag and handed it to her. She carried it out of her office. I stood and walked over to the office door. She was asking an assistant to run down the records on the students. The assistant nodded, photocopied the roster, and handed Mary the original.
When Mary Dawson gave me back the piece of paper, I could feel her hand shaking.
“There’s a couple other things you could help us with.”
“Of course.” Her voice was low, her expression somber. The lines between her eyebrows were sharper now.
“We need some information on Virginia Rinaldi. We think maybe Human Resources might know.”
“Let me get them for you.” She picked up her desk phone and hit four numbers. “Rhonda, this is Mary.” They did a few seconds of small talk. “I’m with a police detective. Karen Seagate. There was … an incident at Virginia Rinaldi’s house last night. The detective has a couple questions. Can I put her on?” She paused a second, then handed the phone to me. I sat down on a chair next to her desk and introduced myself to the woman. I pulled my head back to try to read the buttons on the phone, then hit Speaker.
“Rhonda, does Professor Rinaldi list a daughter, maybe in her twenties?” I waited.
“No, she doesn’t list a daughter. She has a son, Robert Rinaldi, on her health plan.”
“Phone or address on him?”
Rhonda read off a phone number and a street address. Ryan was writing it all down.
“Is there a husband?”
“No.”
“Does it show a previous last name for the professor?”
“No.”
I thanked Rhonda and hung up.
Mary Dawson stood, walked over to the office door, then turned back to me. “Let me see how those records are coming.”
I handed Ryan my cell. “Call the son for me.” He punched it in, then handed me my phone. It went to voice mail. “Robert, this is Detective Karen Seagate, Rawlings Police Department. I need you to call me back.” I left the number and ended the call. “Shit.”
Ryan said, “He might have a roommate.”
Mary Dawson came back in and handed me a sheaf of papers attached with a big paper clip. “I highlighted anything you might want to look at.”
I stood. “Mary, thanks very much. Sorry to have to tell you about this.”
She nodded slightly. “Maybe it was just a terrible accident.”
“Yeah, I hope so. That’s probably it.” Ryan and I walked toward her office door. She followed us out. “We’ll get back to you if we need anything else. Appreciate it.”
Back outside the Administration Building, Ryan and I sat down at a metal mesh table with four chairs bolted to the cement in a little plaza. A few yards away, the sunlight reflected off a big hunk of scrap metal that I think was supposed to be a sculpture. “How’re we gonna get to Robert’s roommate?”
Ryan was looking at his tablet. “Robert’s address is on South Harson Street in Portland. That’s three blocks from Reed College.” He looked up at me. “Want me to try to reach their Mary Dawson, see if we can get a name and phone?”
“Yeah, try it.”
He pulled out his phone and called the dean of students at Reed College. He told them who he was and what he wanted. “Great,” he said, then paused. “I see.” He ended the call. “Yes, they can do that.”
“But?”
“But they won’t.”
“Call Mary Dawson.” I held out my hand as he speed dialed her and handed me his phone. “Mary, Karen Seagate. Sorry to bother you again.” I explained that Reed College wouldn’t give us Robert Rinaldi’s roommate’s contact information. She said she’d try, then get back to me. I thanked her and ended the call.
Ryan looked up from the stack of pages we had gotten from Mary Dawson.
I handed him his phone. “Anything?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Not yet. There’re seventeen students. Mary gave us the unofficial transcripts from each one, plus a sheet they call Action Points.”
“What’s that?”
“Seems to cover a bunch of things: previous degrees, certificates, honors and awards.” He thumbed through the pages. “Okay, here we go.” He held up the stack for me to see. There were a couple of yellow highlighted portions on the page. “This student—Alan Schreiner—is on the Debate Team, which won a regional championship.” He thumbed through a few more pages, stopping at the highlights. “Rebecca Josephson is the Vice-President of the Student Association.” He shuffled some more. “Martin Hunt received a formal reprimand because his fraternity—Alpha Phi Sigma—was cited for underage drinking. He’s
the president.”
“Underage drinking. I’m shocked.” I paused. “Anything come of it?”
“Give me a second.” Ryan read a little bit. “There was a party. Some kind of rush event. A freshman who’d been to the party got in a car accident later, broke his arm and cut up his face. He was cited for DWI. His father wanted to punish the fraternity for its role in the accident.”
“For his son going to a fraternity party, drinking illegally, and driving drunk?”
“I’m just reading what it says.” Ryan looked up at me. “At first the fraternity denied having anything to do with it because they had no way of knowing the freshman would drive. Then the national fraternity got involved. They must’ve convinced the local chapter to roll over. So the chapter apologized, said they would be more vigilant about checking IDs, et cetera. They attended some sort of program put on by the university about underage drinking. And the chapter president signed off on this reprimand letter.”
“And the father went away happy?”
“Not sure about happy, but he went away.” Ryan looked at another page. “And the son’s been a moderately successful general business major ever since. He’s a senior now.”
“Anyone else?”
Ryan shuffled a few more pages. “Alicia Henson was disciplined for maintaining a file with a bunch of freshman essays that she sold to students for fifteen bucks a pop.”
“What was her story?”
“Let’s see.” Ryan paused a second. “She wasn’t selling the papers. She was letting the students read them to learn how to write better essays.”
“And the fifteen bucks?”
“That was to cover the costs of setting up the system and running it. She claimed that students had to agree to a statement about how they wouldn’t submit the papers as their own because that would be cheating and they wouldn’t learn anything.”
“And what did the university do to Alicia?”
“They suspended her for a year so she could think about it.”
“Which she did?”
“Apparently. She’s a junior geology major. Doing quite well.”